Orwellian Diction: Politics' most powerful tool
Published 28 October 2004
Hi! You've stumbled upon a blog post by a guy named Ryan. I'm not that guy anymore, but I've left his posts around because cool URIs don't change and to remind me how much I've learned and grown over time.
Ryan was a well-meaning but naïve and priviledged person. His views don't necessarily represent the views of anyone.
I've been saying it for weeks, and someone finally wrote a book about it. In contrast to the Republicans, democrats and others in the Left have underutilized the power of diction in representing their political motives. Wait, let me try it again: unlike Bush and his cronies, Liberals suck with words. Until now. George Larkoff's new book, Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate—The Essential Guide for Progressives, aims to change all that. Larkoff, a linguist at University of California-Berkley, examines exactly how framing language has power in a political conversation.
Larkoff's work hopes to combat that of Conservative Strategist Frank Luntz, who touts a very 1984-style of language reform for Conservatives, especially in the realm of the environment. According to BushGreenwatch, Luntz encourages Conservatives to call themselves “conservationists” instead of “environmentalists≵ because, 'conservationist' conveys a ‘moderate, reasoned, common sense position between replenishing the earth's natural resources and the human need to make use of those resources’.
Luntz would admire Bush's “Health Forests Act” and “Clear Skies Initiative” for allowing corporate deforestation and air pollution respectively, while hiding behind friendly names.
So what can the wise and selfless do? Change our words. Republicans did this with the Estate Tax, which they consciously re-coined the “Death Tax,” making it seem less like a tax on the elite and more like a tax on everyone. Some ideas:
| Old Term | New Term | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Liberal | Progressive | “Liberal” is a bad word in many circles: note how Bush attacks |
| Pro-Choice | Pro-Freedom | When Conservatives call themselves pro-life, what's the opposite? Pro-death? Pro-murder? Let's call abortion laws what they are: they are pro-freedom. Having the freedom to choose an abortion gives a woman the freedom to control her own body; it gives her the responsibility that comes with freedom; it rejects the assertion of Christian dogma, allowing the freedom of religion. Roe vs. Wade supporters need to frame the argument in terms of what it really is: freedom guaranteed by civilization. The opposite is chaperoned life. It's pro-regulation. No one wants the government to tell you what to do, not even conservatives. Calling pro-life pro-regulation frames it as impairing freedom, restricting our liberty. |
| Pro-Life | Pro-Regulation | |
Tax Cuts/Relief | Service Cuts | Taxes fund government services. Republicans tout tax cuts as “tax relief,” allowing them to sound like heroes saving the public from oppressive taxes. But tax cuts end funding for government services—the guarantees of health, emergency care and a clean planet that we deserve and demand. Renaming “Service Cuts” allows progressive to remind the public what exactly they miss by supporting tax cuts. |
| Death Penalty | Government Murder | This may be a bit of a stretch, but it's embarrassing that the United States and Libya are the only two nations not part of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights all because Texas reserves the right to execute 16-year-olds. |
| Protection of Marriage | Universal Rights | Same-sex couples deserve the same rights as different-sex couples, and using the word “protection” allows conservatives to grasp at a moral backing. Truly, homosexuals deserve civil rights, just as the rest of us, and placing the argument within this context will resonate with many more people. |
Progressives could be more successful passing sensible laws if they named them what they were: The Safe Streets and Homes Act would be much more successful than the Brady Bill; safe streets are what we get, whereas “gun control” raises the hackles of libertarians and small-government supporters. Responsible Business Initiatives might crack down on corporate pollution, but they frame it within the idea of responsibility, which is key to protecting the environment.
The major pitfall in the current political diction is avoiding factions. Avoid business versus the environment, because the vast majority of Americans know that having businesses is important to the continued American prosperity—and our having jobs. All Americans are cost-conscious today, so we have to avoid allowing taxes to be a central argument, instead, services, programs, assistance—the things taxes provide—should be central. Americans also love freedom, so government programs must be discussed in terms of their impinging upon civilians' freedom, especially the USA PATRIOT act.
In the enlightened society, words are our weapons. Conservatives have dug themselves into this image of the common-sense, moral, American values group in the face of their self-serving policies. Selfless policies are not enough—progressives must break their arguments down into positive-sounding terms in order to promote them to the American public.